Resveratrol is a plant antitoxin generated by plants when they suffer pathogenic aggression and environmental deterioration. It is mainly derived from the plants such as peanuts, grapes, Polygonum cuspidatum, mulberry and the like. There are four forms of resveratrol in nature: trans-resveratrol, cis-resveratrol, trans-resveratrol glucoside and cis-resveratrol glucoside. Studies have shown that resveratrol is predominantly in trans form, trans-resveratrol and trans-resveratrol glucoside are thermally stable, and cis-resveratrol and cis-resveratrol glucoside are thermally unstable. Multiple studies have shown that the biological activity of trans-resveratrol is higher than that of cis-resveratrol, resveratrol glucoside is capable of releasing resveratrol under the action of glycosidase in human intestinal tract, and trans-isomer can be transformed into its cis-isomer under ultraviolet irradiation, thus, the establishment of an accurate method for determining four isomers of resveratrol in peanut is of great significance to detailed tracking studies of the transformation and loss of resveratrol and its glycosides during peanut processing, to the grasp of the loss law of resveratrol and its glycosides during the processing, and to the promotion of the development of resveratrol industry.
The molecular structures of the four isomers of resveratrol and its glycosides are shown as follows:

Resveratrol has very important application prospect. It has been found in studies that, resveratrol and resveratrol glucoside have variety of pharmacological effects; resveratrol can treat the anaphylactic diseases such as tinea and dermatitis, and has the effects of reducing lipid in serum and liver, preventing atherosclerosis, reducing platelet aggregation, protecting liver, and preventing coronary heart disease. In addition, resveratrol can effectively inhibit cell activity related with various processes of cancer. Furthermore, resveratrol, as a natural antioxidant, has been listed in “Anti-aging Scripture” (USA) as one of the “100 most popular effective anti-aging substances”.
With the deep development of peanut, it is found that all parts of peanut have a relatively high content of resveratrol, for example, peanut sprout contains four isomers of resveratrol, peanut skin contains three isomers of resveratrol, and peanut butter contains one isomer of resveratrol. Therefore, it can lay a good foundation for the subsequent development of resveratrol resources to develop a method for extracting resveratrol from peanut quickly and efficiently and detecting the contents of the four structures of resveratrol and its glycosides in peanut simply, quickly and accurately.
There are many methods for detecting resveratrol, mainly including high performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and capillary electrophoresis.
1. High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)
At present, the most widely used method for quantitative analysis of resveratrol is high performance liquid chromatography which has the advantages of good reproducibility, high selectivity, high sensitivity and reliable results. HPLC can be used not only for the routine analysis of resveratrol, but also for the trace analysis of resveratrol in wine. However, HPLC requires long detection time, the amount of the analyzed sample is limited, and HPLC cannot be used for sample analysis on a large scale.
2. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS)
Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) is carried out as follows: the sample is extracted with solid phase extraction cartridge and eluted with diethyl acetate, the eluent was blow-dried with N2, derivatized with silanization reagent and then introduced into GC/MS instruments for analysis and detection.
The advantages of GC/MS comprise: simultaneous detection of cis-resveratrol and trans-resveratrol, less sample consumption (only 1 mL), high detecting speed (about 16 minutes), and low detection limit (minimum 3.72 μg/L). However, this method requires derivatization of the sample by silanization, which not only increases the processing links, but also leads to a higher determination result of cis-resveratrol and a lower determination result of trans-resveratrol relative to their actual contents.
3. Capillary Zone Electrophoresis (CZE)
Capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) is also known as capillary free zone electrophoresis. As a rapidly-developing detection method in recent years, it was also applied in the detection of resveratrol. When resveratrol is analyzed by capillary zone electrophoresis, due to the polyhydroxy structure of resveratrol, it is easier to cause the adsorption of the sample, resulting in poor reproducibility. If the UV detector is adopted, due to the short optical distance of capillary zone electrophoresis, it may result in lower detection sensitivity, which is hard to reach μm level.
The detection of resveratrol has been developed in the direction of being more convenient, faster and more comprehensive. Therefore, on the basis of guaranteeing the authenticity of the method, it is necessary to provide a method to overcome the problems of the methods commonly used in the prior art, such as long detection time, low analysis efficiency, low sensitivity and poor reproducibility.